1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to modifying software. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for viewing, editing and/or creating business rules using a graphical user interface.
2. Description of the Related Art
Insurance companies have been processing and settling claims associated with bodily injury for a long time. The task of evaluating, analyzing or estimating the amount of damage associated with one or more types of bodily injuries, especially trauma-induced bodily injuries, can be very complex. Complexity in the evaluation process often arises out of the fact that concurrent expertise in legal, medical and insurance fields is often required to arrive at a particular decision involving a bodily injury claim.
Several factors can affect the estimated amount of the claim associated with a bodily injury. Every accident is different and every injury is unique. Arriving at a customized evaluation of a bodily injury claim, which is unique for a specific accident, injury, etc. is desirable. Applying across-the-board standards may tend to result in an inequitable solution for one or more parties involved. External environmental factors, such as the experience level of a claims adjuster, record of accomplishment of the legal professionals, post-injury quality of life for the injured party, etc., all may affect the valuation of a claim.
During the past several years, many insurance companies have been using computer-based and knowledge-based claim-processing systems to process, evaluate, analyze and estimate thousands of claims in what is believed to be a fair and consistent manner. A knowledge-based claim-processing system may include an expert system which utilizes and builds a knowledge base to assist the user in decision making. Such a system may allow the insurance companies to define new business rules and/or use previously defined rules, in real-time. The business rules are generally written by industry experts to evaluate legal, medical, insurance conditions before arriving at a valuation of a claim.
Often business rules of knowledge-based system may encode the formulas used in evaluating insurance claims in the insurance claim processing software's source code. Thus, for example, the calculation of trauma severity values may be hard-coded into the insurance claim processing software. When there is a new business requirement or a trauma severity calculation needs to be changed, it may be necessary to change the source code. Changing the source code in a large program may be very time consuming. Additionally, care should be used to ensure that a modification is made at each location where it is needed. For example, a particular parameter that needs to be changed may appear at multiple locations throughout the source code. In some cases, the need to change the source code may result in delaying the incorporation of the updated and/or new formulas until the next software system release date. At times, a change may be needed to meet special or unique requirement of a particular user. Such a change may require that the standard formulas be modified or customized for a specific application. For example, different zones or geographic areas in the United States may have different monetary values associated with trauma severity for the same type of injury.
In comparison, some systems have been developed that use databases of rule components. Such systems may typically require that a system administrator find a particular business rule component within a database table to make changes. While viewing a database entry, it may not be apparent what affect a change to the database entry may have. For example, a database entry may be referenced by a number of business rules. If only one business rule has been identified as needing to be changed, the system administrator may have difficulty determining how to best implement the change. If the administrator changes the database entry, other business rules may be unintentionally affected. Alternately, if the administrator creates a new database entry, the database may become unnecessarily large. Another concern may be that if a mistake is made in changing a database entry, it may not be apparent in the future how or why the entry was changed, or who made the change.